/**
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
 * or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
 * distributed with this work for additional information
 * regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
 * with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */
package org.apache.hadoop.hive.serde2.objectinspector;

import java.util.List;


public interface ListObjectInspector extends ObjectInspector {

  // ** Methods that does not need a data object **
  public ObjectInspector getListElementObjectInspector();

  // ** Methods that need a data object **
  /** returns null for null list, out-of-the-range index.
   */
  public Object getListElement(Object data, int index);

  /** returns -1 for data = null.
   */
  public int getListLength(Object data);
  
  /** returns null for data = null.
   */
  public List<?> getList(Object data);

}
